Drugs on the Water

You are what you drink or was that 'eat' -  the water you may be drinking is contaminated with prescription drugs ranging from anti-depressants, to asthma medication.   Americans spent over $230 Billion in 2008 and the drug residues are poisoning our water supply.  Based on  rough calculations this amounts to 50 billion pills taken per year by Americans. According to water experts, many people  flush their unused prescriptions down the toilet, and many drugs are not synthesized by the body, so where does it go?  In our water supply.  

Many have considered the effects from these drugs, according to iwawaterwiki they state:

"The presence of anti-depressants and mood stabilizers in drinking water supply may lead to mental, behavioral and/or emotional disorders undetectably to adults and children .  And while researchers do not yet understand the exact risks from decades of persistent exposure to random combination of low levels of pharmaceuticals, recent studies — which have gone virtually unnoticed by the general public — have found alarming effects on human cells and wildlife ( Donn, Mendoza, and Pritchard, 2008). Some of the prescription drugs in drinking water do not usually create cancer on their own, but elevate the activity of other carcinogens in causing cancer. Also, the human body attempts to mitigate these carcinogens through biotransformation.  Unfortunately, biotransformation of carcinogens can also make carcinogens more toxic in the human body." (1)

It is recommended that proper disposal is the first line of solving this problem, the second line of defense is using adequate filtration of the water in which reverse osmosis is one of the choices.  

1) http://iwawaterwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Articles/Articlename